


The Quiet Ones

by mogwai_do



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: Every system has its limits: mechanical, physical, political. What happens when those limits are exceeded.





	The Quiet Ones

He ran with the others like rats in a maze: panting and breathless and never fast enough. Behind them, ancient institutions and old buildings crumbled as the flames enveloped them. There had been no explosive end or blaze of glory, just a slow erosion as smouldering flames crept through an already weakened infrastructure.

They ran, until their breath was ragged and their hearts were beating hard against their ribs, but it was too little and too late. They were caught, surrounded. There was no pattern to those surrounding them; they were young and old, white and black and Asian and Indian, male and female, fat and fit, and everywhere - inescapable. 

The people wore no hoods, no masks, made no attempt to disguise themselves and that was the most terrifying thing of all: it didn’t matter. Who they were had never mattered when it came to codifying, classifying, allocating and delegating, and it didn’t matter now. They had forgotten the people behind the serial numbers and the resource allocation codes, but serial numbers proved painfully futile as a method of identification when they stood against you.

There was no fear in the people’s faces, whether they knew their prey was toothless or whether they simply didn't care anymore. It had begun with the latter, but it had somehow become the former. In the early days, the slow erosion of rights, the gagging laws and the disappearances had engendered a kind of institutionalised fatalism and now they were paying the price because the illusion of real power only held so long as people cared too much about what they might lose to risk it.

The people didn't speak; there was no list of charges to refute, no chanted slogans to deny, no arguments to deflect. There were no words at all as they closed in, just the sounds of clothing, of shoes on pavement and the half-terrified, half-blustering objections of their victims. He and the others were stripped naked; he had expected a beating at least, but there was no vindictiveness in the movements save the odd cuff when they tried to resist too hard. Their apathy was possibly the most frightening thing of all. 

The march back to the city centre was humiliating and cold; every attempt to escape was rebuffed like waves against a cliff face. It might wear them down in time, but there wasn't any time, not anymore. Up ahead they could see the cages and they struggled anew, but to no avail. 

The cages strung along the bridge railings held food and water and minimal shelter from the weather; some were already occupied. Their fate looming so close they resisted, of course they did, but the crowd was implacable and one by one they were herded into their cages.

As he finally sank to his knees on the rough blanket lining the bottom of his cage and looked out over the river, he laughed softly and brokenly. Like so many others before him, there had been no trial, no chance of appeal; they had fought against a sea of individuals, undisguised and uninterested, yet anonymous and indistinguishable. As it had been for so many others, something far bigger than themselves had finally caught up with them and all that was left was the slow, relentless grind down to nothing.

He watched as each of them slowly left the bridge without so much as a backwards glance, disinterested; now that their aim had been achieved, they were moving onto other things. Further down the row of cages someone was sobbing, half-screaming, demanding to know why, protesting the inhumanity of it. Her pleas fell on deaf ears; there was no response, no-one bothered enough to remain to fight a battle that was already won. 

Eventually the bridge was empty save for the cages and their occupants; the night was filled with sobbing, some almost hysterical, some still desperately pleading of people who were no longer even there. They had gone, as silent in their departure as they had been in the tidal swell of their approach, as they been when they had taken away everything that had ever meant anything to him: the money, the status, the power, the smart clothes and the flash cars, the right to say who could have what and when, the power to change other people's lives without knowing or caring how those lives might be affected.

Turnaround might be fair play, but it was a bitter pill to swallow. He and his colleagues had made it through the petitions, the protestors, the rioters and the revolutionaries, but in the end it was always the quiet ones.

FIN


End file.
